Restoration on our sites

Our ground-breaking research and development of restoration techniques has gained independent support from a range scientific and environmental institutions and industry bodies.

Our estate covers over 22,000 ha of woodland throughout the UK and just over 13% of the this estate is ancient woodland that have been planted over with conifers. This is how we're restoring woodland on these sites.

Our policy on our own planted ancient woodland sites

We are committed to restoring all of our sites that have been planted with non-native conifers

These sites are valuable because of the remnant ancient woodland species and habitat that they contain

Management is focused on conserving remnant ancient woodland components, and enhancing their long-term viability and value.

For over ten years we have been leading the way in ground breaking research and the development of the necessary techniques for the successful restoration. We champion the gradual and pragmatic approach to restoration. Our approach has now gained support from a range scientific and environmental institutions and industry bodies.

All of our 3000 ha of planted ancient woodland sites are at various stages in the restoration process. Some of our latest acquisitions have only recently started the journey and some of our older woodlands have been under restoration for many years and are approaching the latter stages.

We are committed to sharing what we have learned through our demonstration programme. In 2013, working in partnership with the National Trust and with a grant from Heritage lottery Fund, this culminated in the purchase of Fingle woods, near Dunsford in Devon. Fingle is 169 ha of ancient woodland with extensive areas of PAWS, where we hope to showcase the restoration process from beginning to end to interested landowners.

Similarly in Wentwood, South Wales, we will be using our estate woodland to demonstrate how ancient woodland can be restored following outbreaks of tree disease in the PAWS.

This is just a flavour of the demonstration events that are talking place at Woodland Trust woods throughout the country, and there will be events in woods near you. So if you’re interested and would like to see how we do things on the estate, be sure to keep an eye on our events page for the latest dates and locations.